17 Years Ago, I Terminated a Pregnancy and Have Never Told the Story Until Now

The uncomfortable reality of third-trimester pregnancy termination.

I used to think that giving up the baby was the worst thing that I had ever done. It was worse than being in an abusive relationship. It was worse than being gaslighted by the man who was supposed to love me. It was worse than having my late teen years ripped away.

Getting pregnant at seventeen isn’t ideal. Even if you’re in a great relationship, or have the most supportive family, or want that baby more than life itself. A seventeen-year-old is simply not emotionally equipped to raise a child.

However, we do. We do it all of the time. We sit on cold toilet seats looking at this stick that we’ve just pissed on, to reveal that life as we know it has transformed with the arrival of two little pink lines.

We then contemplate our options. We don’t use the word abortion because, even now, the term seems dirty — a bad thing despite our family values. So, instead, we call it an option. What are our options?

When I found out I was pregnant, I was sitting in one of the staff toilets at KFC about to go on shift. I was wondering how I was going to tell my boyfriend. I was hoping it was a faulty test. But tests don’t give false positives, and I knew that.

Here is the part where I should give more insight into the man who knocked me up — the guy who I had moved in with after convincing me my parents were crap.

This is the boy who would guilt-trip me into having sex with him by saying that he’d have to go somewhere else to “find it” if I wouldn’t give it up readily.

The person who, when we’d fight, and I’d threaten to leave, he’d say, “go for it, you’ll be back within a week. Nobody is going to want a fat pig like you anyway.”

This is the part where I should talk more about that guy. Tell you a name or an alias or how we came to meet and fall in love. But my heart wants to protect itself, or perhaps I’m worried he’ll somehow find this article and get a swollen head from seeing that I still write about him, either way, I don’t want to waste any more paper space on his part of the story.

I have never been a brave person. A brave person would have gone straight to the doctors asked for an abortion, left the guy and moved on with her life. Because a brave person would have known that she could never have loved this baby when she hated herself so much. I didn’t want that baby the same way I didn’t want to be stuck in a terrible, hurtful relationship any longer.

But I was afraid of what my friends might think when I told them I was going to have an abortion. I was scared of what my aunts and uncles might say behind closed doors, whispering about how this incident has tarnished our family’s name.

I was afraid of the rumours that would spread like wildfire through my small hometown. I was so fearful of the backlash, so I pretended to want the baby more than anything in the world.

I did leave the man, though. I figured I had to be brave about something, and if I were going to pretend to love this baby, then I would have to leave the man. I couldn’t keep on pretending to love both of them. I only had enough pretend-love in me for one.

Eventually, after four months of learning how to be a pregnant 17 (almost 18) year old, I did begin to love the baby. I started envisioning a real life that we could make together. I could do distance learning and get that diploma I had been avoiding. We could set up just the two of us in a little one-bedroom apartment, and we would be there for each other always.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the traditional way of doing things, but that wouldn’t matter because I was beginning to farm for courage. I was learning to grow a bit of nerve in order to protect myself and my baby.

As it happened, soon after this revelation, my world shattered. It wasn’t a slow and steady kind of fall, but instead a sweeping out of my feet, upturning the existence I thought I had so perfectly carved out for myself.

I was late getting my first ultrasound as there had been some mix up in the scheduling dates. Finally, at five months gestation, I was going to get to see my little babe. Mom was with me, and she held my hand as we watched this small green spot swim around on the monitor screen. The ultrasound tech had excused herself and was taking a long time just outside the door as she spoke to one of the clinic’s doctors.

Then, when they both returned, I was told that there was something wrong.

Mom and I were brought into a small room and told that the baby had an abnormally large head and clubbed feet. Upon further inspection, the child suffered from hydrocephalus and a very severe case of spina bifida.

When I pleaded that there must be something we can do, the doctor offered that I could try to carry full term. If I chose to do so, the child would be airlifted immediately after birth to a hospital that specialized in diseases like spina bifida. They would immediately begin operations on the infant to ensure her survival. However, they wouldn’t promise anything because of the severity of her condition.

The baby would likely spend the rest of her life in a care facility. Her symptoms were simply too advanced for anyone to care for at home. Currently, this small human in my belly had a gaping hole in her back that was half the size of her body.

Once again, came the question of bravery. Was I brave enough to let go? To say goodbye? Was I brave enough to commit the rest of my life to care for a person who would need constant support? Was I willing to give up my future for this baby?

It seemed to me that either path I chose would result in cowardice. For weeks, I lay in my childhood bed, starting up at the ceiling, hugging my belly and trying to freeze time. A seventeen-year-old should not have to bear the weight of this sort of burden, yet there I was.

The man didn’t get a say in the decision. When I left him, he had moved out of the province and did not want much to do with me anymore.

When I finally knew what I needed to do, I called him and told him what had happened and how I was moving forward. I left him no room for rebuttal.

I know this was unfair of me. I can see it now. My feminist and equal rights bones shudder to think about how I treated the man at this time, despite my bad feelings towards him.

The thing is, he didn’t see the look of futility on that doctor’s face. He wasn’t there as I violently kicked the back of a car in the hospital's parking lot and fell to the ground after the 10th specialist’s appointment that revealed there was nothing to be done for my unborn child. There was no magic cure for this baby who had stolen my heart so unexpectedly.

This man wasn’t there each time I had to explain to acquaintances in the years to come that, “oh no, I didn’t actually have the baby there were complications, and unfortunately she didn’t make it.”

He didn’t have to try to suppress wild, hysterical grief while answering these questions. That was the consequence I burdened myself with by making my final decision — a thin veil of madness that I would live with for a very long time afterward.

There would be no abortion or D&C, the doctor told me. I was too far along for that. I would have to give birth to the baby naturally, and the child would pass on within hours of her delivery. The nurses explained this in a neat and tidy fashion as part of the admittance process to the hospital.

I wish I could go into more detail about the procedure. Rereading this, it all sounds prehistoric. However, whether it’s my brain blocking out the logistics or I simply wasn’t paying attention at the time, I can’t seem to remember the small complexities.

I remember that once my contractions started, I simply allowed my body to take over. I remember pain and dim lighting. I remember swearing and crying and trying to be brave because that’s what Mom kept telling me to do.

I remember thinking that it would never be over. Even once the baby was out and gone, this pain would never be over.

To go through the anguish of childbirth, knowing full well that you will not get a child at the end is a thing I do not wish on anyone. I felt the baby slide out of me, and for the merest of seconds, I thought, “I have a baby now,” only to remember that this baby will soon be dead. That type of thing does bring on a sort of manic insanity. How couldn’t it?

The nurses asked if I wanted to hold her before she was gone. I said no in a deadpan sort of way. I still wonder 17 years later, if my baby was scared and alone as she passed away. Mom held her, though, so I like to think not.

At 18, I did not have the mental stability to cope with these events. My mom enrolled me in a nonprofit program that dealt with counselling for women who had lost or aborted babies. I was put into a room and shown a video about the dangers of abortion, and why abortion was wrong. I walked out before the video finished and have never had anything good to say about that program ever since — 0 out of 5 stars.

One evening, as I plucked weeds from Mom’s garden, a neighbour lady stopped by asking if I wanted to join her for tea on her patio. I was feeling lonely and wanted to get my mind off the baby, so I agreed.

The older woman handed me a cup of mint tea then promptly started speaking about how I had cursed my child to a life in limbo because I had aborted the pregnancy.

Once again, that bubbling combination of madness and misery rose to my throat, and I had to work hard to swallow it down. I drank my tea, listened to the woman speak then politely told her I had to leave.

There would be so many more circumstances just like this one. People would talk and give me sideways glances and pitying looks. They’d call me a slut for using abortion as a birth control method.

I’d have nightmares that I had not made the decision to terminate but instead was shackled to a life of daily hospital visits, health stresses and medical bills. But, on the other hand, I had her.

I still have her pictures. The nurses had dressed her in a white flowing baby gown and had taken pictures of her. Mom discreetly spoke to the photo place in the mall (this was before digital) about the nature of these pictures when she took in the roll in for developing.

I mailed a few to the man because he deserved to see his daughter. He called me when receiving the photos and I explained that she had already passed on in the pictures. He didn’t say anything, but I heard him softly crying. I’ve seen him on three different occasions since this all happened. We’ve never spoken about the baby again.

Seventeen years later, I still think about her. It’s not like everyone says, though. It does get better. As I wrote this story, I cried for the first time in years regarding the baby. It’s like all of her death-day anniversaries caught up to me and allowed that hysterical sadness to finally bubble over and get out. And that felt good.

This is the first and probably only story I will ever write about her. It’s too hard and brings me too close to that familiar edge of sad insanity that I walked all those years ago.

Once, I thought that giving up the baby was the worst thing I had ever done. I felt like I was a selfish person and had to hide that selfishness from the world by never speaking about my lost baby to anyone.

Now I realize that it wasn’t the birth or the whispering of townsfolk or the stigma of abortion that stuck to me like a bad smell. I know now, after so many years of quiet reflection, that I simply did what I needed to do as a young woman to survive.

The difficulty nowadays comes from those moments of silence. When I see a 17-year-old and think that’s how old she’d be now. It’s the way my hands shake when I hold her pictures, and so many years later, I can still feel the recklessness of grief overtaking my brain. I can feel her tiny malformed body detaching from mine.

When people ask me how many children I have, I want to say three because, for seven months, she lived inside of me. I felt her spin and dance in my belly and move to the sound of my voice. However, telling people that I had three, but decided to terminate one just before birth because of a laundry list of crazy complications, makes for uncomfortable small talk.

So instead, I talk about my two children, the ones who were born healthy without holes in their backs and oversized heads and little clubbed feet. And the people smile and tell me how fortunate I am to have such a beautiful family.

But always in the back of my mind, I think about her too. She is my secret baby. And having to keep her a secret, so not to make strangers uncomfortable, is often the hardest part of all.